Episode #465 – Entrepreneur Like a Mother with Beth Mazza

Cherylanne Skolnicki:

I’m Cherylanne Skolnicki, and this is Brilliant Balance, the show for those of us who still dare to want it all, who have big dreams and bold ambitions. I think we deserve to have a big, full life and the freedom to enjoy it. So let’s design our next chapter together for brilliance, not burnout. Each week, I’ll bring ideas, insight, and a fresh perspective to keep you growing into a life that feels as good as it looks. Brilliant Balance, your life, your way. Now, let’s get started.

So my guest today is Beth Mazza. Beth spent three decades building businesses, most recently Ashton Partners and Claremont Partners. They’re consulting firms that she built from the ground up, one of which was later acquired, all while raising four kids. Alongside her business partner, Victoria Cyrus, a mother of five with her own entrepreneurial path, she’s turned those years of trial, error, and hard won lessons into female mavericks, a community of roughly 15,000 women, a newsletter and a forthcoming book that we’re gonna talk about today called Entrepreneur Like a Mother.

It’s all built around one idea, that women don’t need more encouragement. They need an actual playbook for building something big without losing the parts of life that matter the most. And today, Beth is here to talk about what that playbook actually looks like, the tools that she and Victoria built, like the Mommy Mayhem Matrix, I love that name, and the mistakes that shaped them and where her own definition of ambition overlaps and doesn’t with the kind of brilliant balance that we talk about around here. So Beth, welcome to the show. Oh,

Beth Mazza:

I’m so glad to be here.

CS:

It’s been fun meeting you today. I wanna talk first a little bit about little Beth. This is always where I like to start. <laugh> Um, you say that you grew up watching your dad run his own business, and by your account, he treated you and your brothers all the same way when it came to learning about it. What’s something that you remember from that chapter of life that you still use today?

BM:

Yeah. Uh, first of all, I’m super amazed that my very ethnic dad treated my two brothers and I the same and we’re all entrepreneurs, so that probably tells you something. Yes. The thing I remember about him was he was working twenty four seven, but I also would hear him on the phone in a really good way with his colleagues. I mean, clearly he was in charge, but I would constantly hear him say, “Well, what do you think? You have more expertise. You were on the shop floor. Huh, tell me more.” And like, it just sticks in my head a little bit. And now I realize that’s just very natural to me to assume that you might know more than me, so I’m gonna shut up and listen. That was a great lesson I think was wildly unintended for him to teach me. <laugh>

CS:

And what, what kind of business did he run?

BM:

He had a couple. So he started, he is a lawyer and he would buy distressed businesses, turn them around and sell them. So I mean, we, he had printing companies, he had coal companies. My brothers and I remember he had a storage unit company that for a while there was nobody working after like 6:00 PM, so the calls got forwarded to our house. To your house. Oh my God, my brothers and I still, I mean, we’re in our 50s. We still talk about Carol Stream Self Storage, may I help you five by five unit. I mean, in a weird way though –

CS:

It was bonding.

BM:

It was bonding and like we integrated business into our family life and I think the three of us do it now too. So it was, it was really ingrained. I couldn’t imagine anything.

CS:

There’s something about growing up in a household where somebody owns a business that it does sort of come in throughout. I did not have that experience, but my kids have had it. And I think the conversations at the dining room table are just different when they’re, when they’re with a parent who’s an entrepreneur. So then you went on. Um, tell me a little bit about your education before you decided to start Ashton Partners.

BM:

Yeah. I went on and I got, um, an undergrad from Notre Dame, Go Fighting Irish. <laugh> And it was finance. And I worked for maybe a year in a Fortune 500 company. And I mean, I was the worst employee. Also, I was one of the very few women, so it was finance. And two thirds of the people, all men, were working in like an investment portfolio on the pension fund. Not me. My first year, no joke, as a finance major coming out of Notre Dame was I was doing customer service to like pensioneers that were calling about their benefits. And like, I think it just sort of hit me there. First of all, I was really restless, uh, but also that I did not want my next years to be in the hands of someone else. So I ended up going to law school at night and I found a job during the day working in the field that I started the firms in, investor relations, had a really great mentor and, um, who, I mean, I later totally dogged by leaving and starting a competing firm.

Like I absolutely did. We made peace, but that wasn’t the greatest. Um, and I just sort of, I loved being an entrepreneur and I thought, well, maybe I can try this. So I started this competing firm at the time when I was not smart enough to realize I didn’t have a non-compete, but in the future I probably would. So – uh-huh. Mm-hmm. I was really young to have started that. But I think I just didn’t really know any other way and I had this really terrible corporate experience and I just like extrapolated that my entire life was gonna be terrible corporate experiences, which may or may not have been true.

CS:

But you’re like, I may as well go out on my own and give this a

BM:

Shot. Yeah. Made so much sense to me. I don’t know why.

CS:

And was that Ashton Partners or was that a precursor? Was that your startup? No,

BM:

That was Ashton Partners. And actually we sold that one as well. That was the first company I sold. We sold Ashton in Claremont. So I had, um, you know, I was pretty young, but that field took off at the time when public companies took off, right? They’re receding now. But at the time there was like 2,000 public companies and then a couple years later there were 10,000. Mm-hmm. And especially in the early days, they really needed the function that we had. Mm-hmm. And I mean, I could call CEOs all day long. Like I figured out that after five o’clock, their assistants – Skipped the assistant. Yeah. Yeah. They

CS:

Had to pick

BM:

Up. I mean, you could obviously do that now, but it worked then. <laugh>

CS:

Right. Right. And so this is an era where you were building these businesses while you were raising your family. So tell me how that intersected. Like when you sold Ashton and you were starting the next business, like how old were your kids? How far apart were they?

BM:

Yeah. So when I sold Ashton, uh, I had all four of my kids. So I went through the sales process for Ashton. Like we, we grew pretty quickly and I had a business partner who was not Victoria. Victoria worked for me at the time, but I had a business partner. And we were kind of going in different directions and I think we both realized, hey, we could monetize this and move on. And by the way, he has since started a great firm and still runs it. And, um, I just found out I was pregnant with twins when we had gone through a sales process. We were at the five yard line. We got an LOI for 30% less than what we ultimately sold it for. And I mean, I was super hormonal. I felt like I did not see my older two as much as I wanted to, even though I took my older two to work all the time.

BM:

And, uh, yeah, I called the potential buyer and just let loose. And, um, he was so kind. He was so kind. And at the end of it, he said, “Can I tell you how you can get the multiple that you expected?” And I said, “Sure. Fine.” And he literally gave me three or four things that were not easy fixes, but bad hard fixes. Wow. And one of the big things he said is, “Look, this looks like a business that revolves only around you. You tell me a different story, but on paper, I can’t see it. Here’s how I fix it.” And he gave me a bunch of things and a year.

CS:

Oh, how generous. I love that.

BM:

And, by the way, he bought mine a year and a half later at the multiples we talked about. Wow. Fixed it. Yeah. He. I now realize, right, because I was pretty young then. I was like 35, 36. I now realize like that’s not how the world –

CS:

Not normal. Yeah. But there’s a lot to learn in that story, right? The humility of saying, “Okay, great. Yeah. Tell me what would have to be true.” And then executing against it – Yes. And coming back to get what you actually wanted. There’s a lot to learn there.

BM:

And I always also laugh. I mean, he didn’t know I was pregnant with twins at the time. And actually, I don’t think I ever really talked much about my family. But when he came back to buy the company, it suddenly, you know, I had four-month-old twins. And so we got into the discussion. And I have to kind of hand it to him because he didn’t blink an eye when I said, “Oh, no, actually I have four kids under five.” You know? See, it’s

CS:

Like that’s totally normal, right?

BM:

Right. He didn’t say much.

CS:

Well, and I think it’s interesting that you said you didn’t talk much about your kids. I think in that era, ground me in like what year this was.

BM:

Uh, so that would have been like 2008 to 10. Mm-hmm. And you’re, you’re right. I mean, we didn’t talk about our kids because nobody talked about theirs and it was mostly men. I mean – That’s right.

CS:

That’s right.

BM:

Particularly in

CS:

A, in a culture, if you know the culture of the company or the competitive nature for placement into roles, I was at Procter & Gamble in that era. I was very competitive to get the next role. And I think you, you weren’t gonna talk about anything that was gonna make you look like a weaker candidate, you know, largely. And I think anyone who did. I, actually , probably was one of the people who did. Like I did some interesting things related to having kids, but it is, it was a risk. It was a known risk to know that if you were gonna kind of out yourself and talk about the importance of your children or what you needed accommodations-wise, um, it was potentially gonna be harmful to your progression.

BM:

Oh, I, I think so. And I wonder too, now that I look back on that, like, do you think even your bosses would’ve known that they might have been discriminating in some way? I mean, I felt it was so innate. I’ll never forget when we were bought the first time, Victoria got pregnant with her daughter, Allie, who’s now 15. And she was so. She is such a genuine human being. She was so happy. You know, she said it at a staff meeting and people sort of, you know, said something.

CS:

Politely clapped, right. <laugh> And

BM:

Then later, a guy came up to her, a very, very senior guy, right? Mm-hmm. And said, “Well, this is sort of the end of your ambition. This is when you have something else to focus on.” Ouch. I’m like, “Was he a total idiot? I mean, yeah, but maybe he was just saying what everybody else was thinking.”

CS:

Mm-hmm. So – I think that’s the, that’s the unanswered question, right? In that era, how much was just unconscious bias and how much was conscious but buried and very quiet, you know, and just sort of subtly affecting progression, but maybe not being spoken. I’d rather people just out with it. <laugh> Just

BM:

Tell me what you’re thinking. In a weird way, he said it and it gave her a chip on her shoulder to show she wasn’t. That’s right. I do wonder right now if it would be that way. Like, I’m not sure. I think it would be unconscious bias, like jammed out.

CS:

I think it’s different. It. I do think we’re really diff. I think that we are in a different place in terms of – Yeah. First of all, I think this generation of young people coming up, really like the Gen Z employees today, you see such egalitarianism in the, uh, like nature and how they manage their households that I think that’s helping, right? Because the dads are involved as well and there’s a lot of, um, they know what it takes, you know? And they would be really upset if somebody said that <laugh> to their female partner for sure. Yeah. For sure. So I’m curious about, um, so this acquisition happens and then you and Victoria, how does she come into the picture? How do you meet? Because we’re leaning toward, like, you two really figured out how to be entrepreneurs – Yeah. And mothers at the very same time – Yeah.

Which leads to this book you have coming out. So I wanna kind of bridge the gap. Like where did you realize, “Oh, we’re doing something that’s kind of unique?”

BM:

It’s funny. So, I hired her at Ashton, and she very quickly rose through the ranks. Super smart, emotionally intelligent, clients loved her, the hardest worker. I mean, we all dream of someone like Victoria on our team. And so we got really close and when we were acquired, she earned a super senior spot. She was, at the time, at a very large global consulting firm. She was the youngest managing director, let alone the youngest female, who she most certainly was. Just

CS:

Youngest. Right.

BM:

And I think because there weren’t very many. There just weren’t very many women that were senior, we ended up keeping this relationship we had with Ashton, but actually we were a little bit more equal. I ran the full group, but in terms of clients, like, we were pretty equal and we ended up being these really great colleagues. And as she had kids and my kids got older, that grade school period, which is just hard as hell, we sort of quietly just kept covering for each other, like, “Hey, can you t- take that meeting? Be a second on a client.” We were sort of the only two people we had and we did it, which got intensely close. And then I think she also grew up in an entrepreneurial household. I think as we went along, not even that long, we just were like, “We can do this better again.” And we did.

BM:

I mean – Yeah. To her credit, like, we just, we just both grew up in entrepreneurial families, and I think we thought we could do this a little bit better and we can figure out a way to get out of our non-compete, which, you know, we did, but it wasn’t pretty. <laugh> uh-huh. It

CS:

Seems like part of your stated strategy for women who wanna be entrepreneurs at this stage of life is that there are certain kinds of businesses or, like, criteria for businesses that I always say, like, I want you to be able to run a business without breaking your life. Like, what does it look like to have. And, and I, I completely agree with your promise that choosing the right kind of business to be in is a big part of it. I don’t think all businesses align themselves with the lifestyle that a lot of women justifiably want, right? We kinda wanna have our cake and eat it too. What are some of those criteria that you see that make a business more kind of viable in that life stage?

BM:

Yeah, I think we have a really fun chapter, an entrepreneur like a mother called the Mommy Mayhem Matrix. I love it. I wanted to name it really serious, and no one else did, so that’s how we got named that. But conceptually, the first thing you do is say, “Well, what are my financial and personal non-negotiables?” And Victoria was like, “If I’m in town, I’m gonna make the 4:45 train and have dinner with my kids. I’m gonna put them all to bed, then I’ll work till three in the morning,” which is what she did. So I think knowing that we both had young kids and our personal non-negotiable was we were not gonna have several days where we weren’t with them and integrated in their life, it not only changed the fact that we had to do a, a services business where we weren’t getting external money be – and had to, like, double the business and double the business every year because we knew we were beholden to someone else.

BM:

It actually also changed the nature of the type of consulting we did. So, like, in our business, the highest fees come from crisis consulting, like – Yes. You know, a factory blows up, a CEO gets fired, you bring in a SWAT team, you stay there for three weeks, you never move. We had the contacts and the clients to get into that business, and we didn’t do much of it for that reason. And we absolutely gave up growth and profit at certain times because of it. But I think because we had our personal non-negotiable, and because we knew exactly what the multiple that services businesses got – uh-huh. If they had certain growth and certain margins – uh-huh. We thought, okay, without a crisis, we can build that firm – Yep. And that’s where our eye is. And – So

CS:

For, for the maybe less experienced entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs, when you talk about a multiple, what you’re talking about is the times earnings, what can you sell this business for? Yes? Yes.

BM:

Like,

CS:

You’re, you’re focused on exit from the jump. So you start this business thinking about how am I gonna sell this business? And I think that, just double clicking on that for a second, is not typical. Yeah. There are a lot of women starting businesses that are very focused on, “What can I cashflow out of this business on, you know, in the early years? Like, how much money can I make and bring home and spend?” Not, “What kind of value can I create over time so that I can exit this in the future?” And when, and you came in with that, because – maybe because you’d had this earlier exit, you came in with that idea. Yeah. I think that’s novel. I do. I –

BM:

Oh, I agree. And there’s, I mean, two thoughts to it, because I think it’s a simple mindset switch, which is if the industry you’re gonna compete in and the business you’re gonna start doesn’t have any history of being a sellable business, then re- rethink it. <laugh>

CS:

Yes. Because

BM:

You’re building enterprise value every day, your sweat, equity. So to be left with an unsellable business, you’re leaving money on the table. So, I mean, I think that’s one. And then the second, and this is the good news, exactly what you said, if the multiple’s based. I mean, basically, most multiples, unless you’re AI, are five to nine times cash flow. So, that cash you can take in your pocket, right? So, I mean, the idea of building a heavy cashflow business is brilliant either for your own pocket – Either

CS:

Way, right.

BM:

Where it creates value. Right. But I do think that Catch with Women is. And only because I had partners that wouldn’t let me feel this way if I did not go down this path . It’s so much easier to build a business that is completely reliant on us, right, on me. I know what I can do. I don’t know what you can do. But because of that, we end up building unsellable businesses, because nobody wants a business like that.

CS:

Did you know that beyond hosting this podcast, I also directly support women leaders at the intersection of work and life? As a member of Bold, you get direct access to me, the women on my team, and a peer group of exceptional women who are rewriting the rules and redefining what it means to have it all together. Go to brilliant-balance.com/bold to learn more and apply for your spot today. That’s right, because they don’t wanna buy a business that they have to be completely beholden to, right? Exactly. Particularly. And, I think what you maybe illustrated in that lesson from the earlier conversation with the person who acquired your first company, was that he gave you that clue, like, “Hey, this business is too reliant on you. It’s not clear to me that it’s gonna run without you. Therefore, I don’t have anything I can buy,” right? That is exactly.

BM:

I can’t

CS:

Recreate you. So yeah. And I think that’s it. There’s such an important lesson in there for the people who are aspiring entrepreneurs or at an early stage enough to still make adjustments, right? Early stage enough to say, “Oh, I’m sitting here. I’m mid – mid-40s. I’m mid – 50s. I do wanna exit this. What changes do I need to make so that I have a sellable business one day?” I think that it’s just great, great advice.

BM:

And, there’s a great one. There’s an entire chapter in Entrepreneur Like a Mother where we talk about the power move of you being willing to delegate and what you delegate and what you shouldn’t and what your mindset should be. And, and we all know that’s really hard. Amen. But that. We felt like our publisher initially said, “That sounds like a second book.” And we’re like, “Oh my God, that sounds like a successful business. You cannot eliminate that chapter.”

CS:

You can’t. I call it getting results through others. People have such emotion around the word delegation, but getting results through others is like, that’s the power move. If you can figure out how to get results through other people, you have this multiplier on your time that’s just not accessible to you if you’re trying to do everything yourself, right? And we get such an identity from being good at doing things, but it does not scale.

BM:

Yeah. And you know what I finally kind of realized is that there are people that want to be the person that you’re working through. They don’t want to be you. A leader. They think your life does not look interesting. <laugh> They love you. Mm-hmm. Right. Uh, it just took me a while to realize there’s lots of personalities and that wasn’t mine, but I needed lots of those other people.

CS:

Well, because I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a guess at completing your thought. If the re – if the resistance to delegating is, I feel bad asking someone to do this. Yeah. Right? Everyone wants to be doing what I’m doing and handing it off. And it’s like, that’s not actually true. There are people who would prefer to be on the other side of that equation. I think that’s very true.

BM:

Plenty of people. Mm-hmm. I mean, plenty of really brilliant people who like that they can, when they walk out of the office door, they don’t have the worries you have.

CS:

That’s right. And it’s so already in this interview, you know, you’re dropping this very practical advice, right? Like these are actual ideas people can walk away and execute against. And you’ve talked about wanting to move past the warm encouragement model into real tactics. I second this point of view that I think we’re, we’re living in, um, like, it’s like people wanna give you chicken soup for the soul, right? Yeah. And just a warm encore – that’s not how you start and grow a business. It requires actual tactics. Um, what’s a piece of advice that you hear often that you think is well-meaning, but kind of useless?

BM:

Oh my gosh. And this just happened again. You control your time and you tell your customers and clients the time you have. I just thought, no. I mean, that is not business. They will then go to the person next door who says, “Sure, I can do that.” Is there a balance? Of course there’s a balance. But if you demand something from a customer or client, you will not get the business, you will not keep the business, you will not cashflow it. And then I think another, another one I hear that’s repeated back to me from V and I do a lot of mentoring. We just do nonprofit mentoring, whoever we know or we think we could help, we talk to. They’re being told by their coaches not to do 12 and 24 month plans because everything can change quickly. Can you imagine your world if you didn’t know, I bet you a year from now I could be here.

BM:

I could finish a book. I could break seven figures. Like – Yeah.

CS:

I don’t know. I’m, I’m, I have middle ground on this. I think I’ve landed on it’s worth having a north star, but holding it pretty loose because I do think we’re living in a period of like hyper change on so many vectors at once that – Yes. A lot of my plans do sort of reach obsolescence before I wish they had. Um, but I, I completely agree with you that a north star of what am I steering toward? And then maybe staying pretty nimble on the tactics – Yeah. That I’m gonna use every 30 to 90 days. Like I just think the tools are changing so

BM:

Fast. So what kind of north star do you set? I love this discussion. Like what’s your idea of a north star? Is it revenue? Is it? What, what is it? Like how do you think about that? And I’ll tell you –

CS:

Yeah. So I think I have two sides. There’s like the head and the heart part of it. Financially, I always have a goal, right? Yeah. But I also really think about women, like lives touched and depth of impact. So I actually have goals around the number of people that we’re gonna have in coaching support in this company. Yes. Great. Um, because it makes me. I am more excited about waking up in the morning to do that. It’s tied to a number, but I’m more excited about that. Um, and I have a net income goal more than a revenue goal, uh, because I’ve just learned after 15 years of doing this that that matters more to me than the top line.

BM:

Uh, yes. I love what you said. It doesn’t have to be I’m gonna hit, you know, this in revenue, but I mean, they’re both qualitative, yes, but they’re both like the number of people in your community is still this thing. Oh, look, I’m 20% of the way there. I’m 30%. Yeah. Like that’s just so important. And I agree – Yeah. Total change for sure. And

CS:

1. Well, and I think more so now than when I started my first business, you know, 16 years ago. I think just this period of, uh, what feels like hyper mobility, like just everything is evolving so quickly that even I, you know, I really was. I’m probably a later adopter of AI than the earliest, but still earlier than a lot of people coming along. And I, I think February was really the first conversation I was having about agentic AI. Yeah. Like I was talking about large language models before that, well before that. But really having an agent to do specific work on my behalf, it was February. And we’re sitting here in August having this conversation, right? It’ll air in September. That’s a lot that’s changed when I think about how I’m running the business today versus what I was doing in February.

BM:

Is it sense agentic, has it, is it kinda night and day for you in certain areas? ‘Cause it has been for me for sure. Yes.

CS:

Yes, for sure.

BM:

I mean, we have, uh, because the book’s just coming out, but it was written 18 months ago, everything that’s in there is not about building your own agent, right? It is about using it. And we have like very specific queries for here’s how you get to this, but you’re right, there’s a lot changed there.

CS:

And that’s the kind of thing I’m saying. Like I think the tactics have to stay really agile, but the where you’re going can stay very consistent, but the tactics of how to get there, I just, I don’t know how we would guess, you know, like what’s being – uh-huh. What’s being developed. So, so interesting. Yeah. I think the advice that’s my, like, makes me roll my eyes is when it’s a, it’s all mindset. I think there’s a lot of mindset involved. I think you have to have belief, but belief without a solid action plan, without strategies that work, just does not, it doesn’t get you anywhere. And I think there’s too many people selling pure mindset and not enough, like, practical playbooks.

BM:

Yeah. And I always wonder if that’s because you’ve built a business, I’ve built a business. When you talk to women who have built businesses, there’s. We may have very different ones, but I guarantee we both have one. The mindset coaching that I hear some of our mentees getting, if you haven’t built a business and you haven’t gone, “Oh my God, how am I gonna hit payroll if I lose this and I don’t get this?” Like –

CS:

That’s right. That’s right. And those things. I think people who are aspiring entrepreneurs or, again, sort of maybe less experienced, more junior, you have to find people to guide you that have actually done it.

BM:

Mm-hmm.

CS:

You know, that knows what it feels like to carry that pressure of, “How am I gonna pay all these people this week?” Like – Yes. Where is that coming from? Where is the cash vault? How am I keeping it full? Like, that. You just. Those are not. It’s not theoretical anymore once you’ve done it, right?

BM:

Yes. So

CS:

The challenge, of course, is growing a business that’s worth something, right, to you in the near term, and then has this future value when you exit without burning yourself out in the process, because we also want to be great parents and take great care of ourselves – Yeah. And have lives that we enjoy. Um, what’s something about that that you didn’t expect until you were living it? Like, what did you learn by living it?

BM:

I learned that kids are incredibly resilient, and the part that surprised me so much is how proud they are. So I get to be on the other end. My story turns out really great, right? I have four kids, 21 through 25. They’re amazing. They’re resilient. They’re loving. I have a great relationship with them. And when I remem – remind them of, “Oh God, do you remember when I forgot to pick you up at whatever?” More often than not, they don’t even remember it. They don’t. So I get the perspective of that. And the thing that surprised me the most is what they say now, which is, “Mom, we thought it was so cool that you weren’t like the other moms. We thought it was so cool that you were doing X, Y, and Z and that you had Coke as a client.” You know, they were very proud of that.

And I, I’m very humbled by it, for sure, but I also am remembering that the death knell to me when I was at my lowest point as a parent was my business was going crazy. That was going fine. I kept playing the comparison game. You know, I missed this. I couldn’t make this. Maybe I should be this kind of mother. Once I kind of pulled out and thought, well, I’m gonna fail the comparison game, and I just started having these really honest, really conversations with my kid, which is like, “I’m so sorry. I’m gonna miss your brownie walk over the bridge because this is what I have going, but I’ll be on Zoom and my cousin Lisa will, you know, Zoom with me,” which she always did. Uh, I was just really honest with them and I said, “This is why I made this choice.

This is why we’re doing this.” You know, at the time it was a little rocky, but now it’s, it’s not. They. First of all, they’re super resilient, but also they’re very understanding people. Mm-hmm. They, they’re always looking for the overlooked thing about someone and that’s –

CS:

They learned it. Yeah. Yeah.

BM:

They learned like the real world

CS:

Earlier. Yeah.

BM:

You know, that is the real world.

CS:

I think that if we try to set the expectation for our kids that there are no trade-offs, we’re setting them up to fail. Like there are trade offs, right? The. But I think the key is intentionality. It’s been my experience that being very intentional and forthcoming with them about why I’m making the choices I am. I remember talking to them like, “Hey, I will do one party in your classroom. Which one do you want it to be?” Yes. “Do you want me to do Valentine’s Day or Halloween? I’ll hold it. I will make sure I’m there. But I’m not doing all of them.” And I used to say, “All the mommies need a turn. Like we have to take turns.” But which is, which one do you want me at? You know, or, “Hey, I can do this or this. Which one’s more important?” And they were really good at telling.

Being really honest with me about which one mattered more. And then they had buy-in, right? And they knew there was intention and I was gonna hold that commitment when I made it, but it didn’t have to be every single thing.

BM:

And they had agency too, right? Totally. They got to say this, not this. That’s

CS:

Right. And I think mo – them learning to like, oh, I can actually have a point of view and it carries weight, people listen to me and that, that was a huge lesson, right? The independence that they picked up by knowing what are some things they have to do on their own or that I’m not available 100% of the timemaker. Uh, we’re now, again, my kids are also a little older, you start to see those lessons paying off and kind of bearing fruit in different ways. So if that’s a word of encouragement to some of the younger moms listening, I hope, I hope it lands the way it is intended to for sure.

BM:

I mean, you hear these crazy stories about moms that are trying to negotiate benefits for their kids’ first job. Mm-hmm. And I think in the end, I don’t think that’s great for the kids. Right,

CS:

Right. We may need to let them run their own race a little at some point. Yeah, and

BM:

Mess up, right? Yeah. And then be there and say, “Wow, what would you do differently? Yeah, I would’ve done that differently too.” I mean –

CS:

Right. My youngest teases me though that I was like the one kicking her out of the nest saying like, “You can go to the next aisle in the store, you know, without me. Go look at something, I will be right here.” And she’s like, “You were always like, you can do this. Go,” you know, she was maybe not quite ready for

BM:

Those. Yeah, but I guarantee she now knows she can go do it. Now she

CS:

Tell me, “I’m very independent, thank you. I will do everything on my own.” Um, so your book, Entrepreneur Like a Mother, your first book comes out, uh, actually the day this episode releases. I’m so excited. So it would be lunch day when this airs. What is in the book that you haven’t gotten to say yet that, you know, is important to you that a prospective reader knows?

BM:

Here’s the good news: I think about what Victoria and I put in the book. It is so practical. So we have this whole section, I’ll just give you an example, on building a kitchen cabinet. And our kitchen cabinet sold us, helped us sell clients, helped us sell the business, helped us, you know, showed up for our kids when we couldn’t, whatever this is. And so we sat down together and we’re like, “Let’s really architect this for someone because we did it half-assed and we didn’t know.” In that chapter is whether you’re corporate and you wanna stay corporate or you’re entrepreneurial is literally what are your skills, what are the skills that you need to do to get to the next level? We give tons of examples of the different skills by different industries. And then we have really specific ways to go through LinkedIn and figure out who might help you.

And when you get an ask, what type of ask it is. And when you get a yes and you’ve built a relationship, how you help pay it forward. But that’s one example in the kitchen cabinet because it’s been so powerful to us. Yeah, I love it. The kitchen chapter is so prescriptive. Everything has questions, everything has a worksheet, everything has a link for more because we really put ourselves in the situation where we didn’t have somebody that we knew building a services business. We learned everything and we did great things and we also made the biggest, most obvious mistakes ever. And so the lens we look through with that book is, okay, what would we be thinking when we were hiring our first employee? And we would go through it and then we would make sure the book addressed it. So – I love it. It’s super practical, but I will say that, that kitchen cabinet, even if you’re still gonna stay in corporate and you’re just trying to figure out how am I gonna get to the next company, the next level, oh, it’s got such practical stuff in

CS:

It. Awesome. That’s so great. So if your hopes and dreams come true for this book, if all the people who you hope to read it do and that they do what you want, what will happen? What will

BM:

Be true? 10,000 moms build seven figure businesses. Like that’s it. We both got really lucky. We sold twice. We don’t, we’re, we’re retired happily. The whole reason this book started is we were mentoring people quietly. We got together and we were like, “That person could easily have a seven-figure business. That person could…” You know, when we started talking, we said, “Okay, let’s figure out a way to make a playbook.” So it was a really accessible way for someone to just pick it up and say, “Okay, I’m just gonna-” It’s up a

CS:

Great rally and cry. 10,000 moms build seven figure businesses. I love it. I mean,

BM:

I hope there’s a zillion more. Yes. I mean, to do this, to have the ability to control your destiny and also to control your financial freedom. Your kids don’t have college loans. They get nicer first apartments than they would’ve. All these different things that my kids are going through, I feel more justified in the path we took than I did when I was taking it. <laugh> I’ll tell you

CS:

That. Right. And I think, again, that’s the word of encouragement that I would hope to leave our listeners with today, is that if this is a dream that you’ve harbored for a minute or for years, right, and you’ve thought, “I just don’t know. I don’t know if I can make any money doing this.” Everyone always thinks they can’t make any money doing this. Yes.

BM:

<laugh> Um,

CS:

And there’s so much fear around starting it because the security that we believe we have at these fairly lucrative, fairly – Oh yeah. You know, stable careers, um, like the kind that I left and you left – Oh

BM:

Yeah. It

CS:

It does carry risk to go and start something new. And so if you’re going to do it, the kind of insurance policy you can put around you is talking to people who’ve done it before, learning from their mistakes and from the lessons that they wanna pay forward, which is exactly what you’re doing in the book. Putting some people around you, like a kitchen cabinet or a coach or both that can help support you through, um, the fears, the mistakes, the misturns that are gonna come up, especially all, really all the way through the life cycle, but certainly in the early days when I think it’s really easy to turn around and be like, “You know what? Nevermind.” <laugh> Like

BM:

A lot of people quit. Too much. Yeah. You haven’t crossed the chasm where you’re like, “There is no going back. I gotta meet payroll.” <laugh>

CS:

That’s right. There’s an exploratory phase of this that I think you can keep the risk a little lower as you’re kind of sorting things out and having some people to bounce ideas off of at that stage can build a lot of momentum and it’s really exciting. You know, I think ultimately you paint a picture of like, this is an attractive outcome. And so I would love for more people to want to pursue it.

BM:

Excellent. It is an attractive outcome. <laugh> Yeah. I want it for everyone.

CS:

Where is the best place for people to find you online?

BM:

Okay. The best place is my LinkedIn, Beth Mazza, and, uh, Instagram is femalemavericks. And also our website, femalemavericks.com. Great. You can buy the book there. You can also subscribe to Founders Files, which we put out weekly and will always be free. And it’s like a great dose of a little bit of knowledge from the book or, or our own learnings. Free, simple, easy to read and usually has pictures.

CS:

Fantastic. We will link all of those in the show notes so people can find it. Uh, if this has piqued your interest, go get the book and get yourself some support in a kitchen cabinet of your own. Beth, thanks for being here today and everyone thanks for listening. Till next time, let’s be brilliant.